'75 North High grad appreciates concern

April 19, 2007|by TAMELA BAKER

HAGERSTOWN - As the victims' names began to trickle in after Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech, local residents saw one they thought they recognized.

G.V. Loganathan, a professor of engineering and a native of India, was among those reported killed when a student opened fire on classrooms in the school's Norris Hall. Some feared the man was Ganesh Loganathan, who graduated with North Hagerstown High School's class of 1975.

But Ganesh, a 1979 graduate of Virginia Tech, went to dental school at the University of Maryland and is a dentist in Dayton, Ohio.

"That's really amazing that people were concerned and that the newspaper took the time to find me," he said Wednesday.

He was in his office when he heard about the shootings, but he was with a patient and didn't see the coverage right away.

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"I was concerned," he said, because he knew some of the professors there. "I went through the victim list, but I didn't recognize anyone."

"It's just a tragedy; you hear about people having a problem with a professor or a girlfriend," he said, adding that he wishes more could have been done to prevent the second set of shootings. "In retrospect, you wish there had not been so many casualties.

"But it's a tragedy that we can't help our prayers are with the families. No one really knows what the families are going through right now."

His father, a retired Hagerstown Community College professor, appreciated the interest in his son.

"Thank you for your concern," said Shan Loganathan, also a Virginia Tech graduate. "It's a sad story; we've been watching it."

Shan Loganathan lives in Hagerstown. He understood the confusion, noting that "Loganathan" is a common surname in India.

A Virginia Tech spokeswoman confirmed that Dr. G.V. Loganathan, 51, obtained a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1976 from Madras University in India, a graduate degree in technology in 1978 from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, and a doctorate in 1982 from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

She said the university could not confirm the victims' identities, however.

The Associated Press reported that G.V. Loganathan was a civil and environmental engineering professor, according to his brother, G.V. Palanivel, and was the son of a railway worker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.